Location: In California, where Berkeley, Oakland, and Emeryville all meet.

Posts: 100

Quote:

Originally Posted by BobRoosth

It's time for color printer. My Epson 1520 is on its last legs (has been for some time).

The one I want is the Canon iP9900, but don't think I will print enough to justify a $500 printer. It's little brother is the iP8500 at about $350, and the reviews are not nearly as positive as for the 9900.

The HP 8250 gets great reviews, as do the higher end Epsons. My clients have had lousy luck with the Epson C8x printers, so I am rather down on Epson this month.

I expect to print some 8x10 or so photo quality images every month, more color web pages and some greeting card type output.

What are you folk using these days?

I am jumping in here kind of late, but wanted to contribute.

I bought the Epson Stylus Photo 1280 about two years ago when the price dropped because a new model was coming out. I waged war with the printer driver for a while, but I was victorious, and can produce beautiful prints from this machine.

I buy third-party ink cartridges from MIS Associates, for $5 each. The prints look great, and I hardly ever have problems with clogged nozzles, even when I don't use the printer for a couple of weeks.

I printed 50 8x10 and 9x12 prints for an exhibition with this printer. I printed on Epson semi-matte (left over from our Epson Stylus Pro 7500s at work) using this cheap third-party ink, and they looked great. Still do, almost a year later. I also printed 1000 greeting cards with infrared photos on Epson double-sided heavy weight matte paper, and sold them all (20 cards and envelopes for $25).

The 1280 is old now, but I am very happy with mine. I don't have to give Epson $$$ for ink. Their paper is worth paying for, but I don't think it's any more expensive than any other good-quality photo inkjet paper.

FWIW, I have a little HP Deskjet 810C that I use for everything else. I only use the Epson for photo printing. The HP is worth it's weight in gold. But then, so is my Epson.